Rivers, part one

People mark the progress of their lives in many ways. We all share common measures, like the rites of passage our children go through, or the intimate relationships we’ve had. But every one of us also has more personal measures. Maybe it’s the music we loved, or different hairstyles we sported, or the moments we ate new things for the first time. An important one for me is rivers.

It’s no surprise that water has marked the canvas of the best moments in my life story. According to Ed, the old Vietnam vet who I briefly lived next to after my house burned down, I am triple Pisces. A fish’s fish, with fishy temperaments. Ed had a hole the size of a softball in the middle of his back, and was prone to bad fits of PTSD. Naturally, I didn’t question his reading, even if I did find it a little silly.

I don’t buy into astrology, but if I did, it would make perfect sense that many my most peaceful and profound moments happened in or near the water.

Up until I moved to Vegas, I always lived somewhere wet. Lubbock was no rain forest, but most years it rained often enough to keep the lakes from drying up, and the thunderstorms that would roll in in the Spring would sometimes dump several inches of rain. Before Lubbock, I had lived my whole life in Colorado, within walking distance of streams and lakes and raging rivers.

Today, I was sitting outside watching my class play soccer on the artificial turf. It wasn’t too hot, a pleasant surprise for Las Vegas at the end of May. I was listening to an 80’s playlist, daydreaming about where we were might move, fantasizing about catching fish. At that moment, I was struck with a sense of euphoric recall. I remembered a time in first or second grade, when my best friend Jodi and I were wading in the Snake River, which wound its way through our back yard. We had caught some frogs, and I could feel my frog’s cold wet little body in the palm of my hand. I could feel the tight constriction of my rolled-up pant legs on my calves, and the numbing cold of the water which leached into them. The water splashed up with our every step as it curled lazily past us, on down river.

Next my mind jumped to a scene, maybe in the fifth sixth grade. My mom, my step-dad Bob, our dog Hoss and I were eating a picnic lunch somewhere next to Clear Creek, just outside of Georgetown. We had meat and cheese sandwiches and Pepsi for lunch. I was standing in the water looking back at my parents, as Hoss ran up and down the riverbank, occasionally dodging into the willows which were swaying lazily back and forth in a slight breeze. I can still clearly see Bob's bushy seventies-style beard, and my mom's delicate form as she stood before the willows, a Pepsi in hand, the mountains and blue sky in the background making a perfect picture frame.

Fast forward to high school. There was the time we all took turns jumping from the cliff into Bear Creek, swollen high and dangerous with Spring run-off. So cold it numbed you completely in the time it took to cross the twenty feet to the other side. So small, the hole you jumped into was at best 3 feet wide and 2 feet long, carved out by a small waterfall. It was only ever deep enough in the Spring, when the icy cold melt water would swell the pocket to maybe six or seven feet deep. You had to land just right in the spray of the waterfall without getting sucked down by the undertow. You'd plunge in, emerge, lips purple, extremities numb... and then you'd paddle furiously against the back current, lest it sweep you into the rocks beneath the falls. Then you'd make it to the shallow water, crawl out and back up the cliff, soaking in every little ray of sunshine as if your life depended on it. And in a way, it did. It’s amazing no one died.

Then there was the time we waded across the wild waters of Clear Creek, just upstream from the Central City turn-off. Spring again, waves raging like the surf, the water the same color blue as the glass insulators we used to find on ancient telegraph poles near Montezuma. We stupidly forged the river, getting swept downstream a hundred yards before reaching the other shore, too ignorant to know the danger we narrowly avoided. Someone had drowned in the same spot a week later. We didn’t know though, and we wouldn’t have cared. We were hunting for a cave, and instead found a little lean-to at the top of the ridge. On our way back down, someone was taking pot-shots at us from across the canyon. The gunshots echoed off the canyon walls, and rock exploded above our heads.

Spring again, rafting down the South Platt in a leaking Sevlor raft. Four of us in a two-man boat, and one driving the road keeping pace. We switched out drivers every mile or so, emptying the raft of water and inflating it again for the next stretch. Somewhere around mile five, we had to swing wide to the right to avoid a waterfall, and Dave, the weak link in our bunch, over-compensated. We made it past the waterfall, but got spun around backward. In a perfect world we would have gone far right, making safely under the tip of a fallen tree, which was above the water by a narrow margin. Instead, we were swept against the tree, hitting it broadside, our leaking raft no match for the current. It folded, and got sucked under the tree by the wicked current. The others managed to bail out to safety, and were clinging to the tree, but not me. I was on the upstream side of the raft, and it was between me and the tree. I couldn’t grab hold. The river sucked me under right behind the raft. I hit my head on a protruding branch, got a nasty cut, and for a brief moment I thought that my luck had run out. I was pulled under and dragged maybe fifty feet downstream by the undercurrent, but then, as if by magic, the current released me. I popped to the surface like a cork, blood running down my face in rivulets, my friends hooting and hollering from the bank as I dragged myself ashore. Never before or since had I felt so alive, nor so invincible.